Tom Kaplan: Billionaire King Of Cats

Billionaire Thomas Kaplan made his money from mining metals. Now he's focused on something he views as equally precious: saving big cats and exotic snakes from extinction. (Photographed by David Yellen)

Thomas Kaplan, a slim, red-headed 50-year-old mining investor, sits in a midtown Manhattan office, staring at me with his intense hazel eyes. He is speaking slowly and deliberately--he doesn't want me to miss a thing--about his abiding passion: saving endangered big cats and snakes, animal species that he considers to be as precious as the gold and silver that have made him a billionaire (his estimated net worth: $1.3 billion). Kaplan describes a love affair with these animals that began early on. As a child growing up in Fort Lauderdale, instead of playing football or baseball, he tracked bobcats for fun. He recalls one day when a girl from his neighborhood called him in a panic. A crowd of kids had cornered a large bluish-colored snake in a barn, and they were trying to kill it. Kaplan sprinted to the scene, picked up the snake and casually placed it around his neck. Then he took it home.

The snake was an Eastern Indigo, North America's largest native snake, which reaches lengths of up to 10 feet. "They are quite voracious," says Kaplan, fondly. "Their favorite snack is rattlesnake." They are also in serious trouble, listed as a threatened species primarily because of habitat degradation.

But Kaplan believes he has the means and the will to change that through his Orianne Society, a charity named after his daughter that fights to protect Eastern Indigo habitat in the southeastern United States. It is the second such wildlife charity that Kaplan has founded. The first, which launched in 2006, is Panthera, which aims to protect another of Kaplan's childhood passions, wildcats. "If you want psychic gratification, one of the greatest ways is to know that you've made a real contribution to saving a species from blinking out during your lifetime," he says.

He's put his money where his mouth is. Over the past five years Kaplan and his wife, Daphne, have given more than $75 million to the causes of threatened big cats and snakes. His mission now, he says, is to bring others into the fold. As an enticement, he pays 100% of administrative costs for the two charities, which means every donor dollar goes directly to the field. "It's completely inclusive. It's not about, 'This is my domain,'" he says. "My role is to create something that gathers momentum and is really welcoming to people who share this passion." Public support has been steadily growing, but the Kaplans still do the lion's share of the funding: half of the $10.5 million budget for Panthera, and two-thirds of the $2 million for the Orianne Society.

The Oxford-educated Kaplan, who made his hay on investment bets on silver, platinum and gold mining (he's been called "the gold evangelist"), says he never intended to found conservation organizations. He initially funded programs at the Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo, focusing on big cats. But he soon realized that more could be accomplished out in the field without the bureaucracy of a big organization. So he poached Alan Rabinowitz, the world's leading big cat expert, and Luke Hunter, Rabinowitz's number two, from the WCS to found Panthera and monitor the world's remaining big cat populations.

The first roadblock: Rabinowitz didn't have enough trained people for his staff. Kaplan's response: "We must mint them!" So he and Daphne created the Kaplan Graduate Awards for big cat scholars and endowed WildCru, a graduate wildlife conservation management program at Kaplan's alma mater Oxford University. "We're creating the next generation of scientists," he says. The Orianne Society also does work with graduate students in herpetology at the University of Georgia, Auburn University and UMass.

From there, Kaplan started putting his money to work. For the snakes, he funded a $1.5 million breeding facility that opened last year in Orlando. But his biggest focus has been on Eastern Indigo habitat. The Kaplans bought and later donated 2,500 acres of the snake's winter habitat, valued at $6 million, to create the Orianne Indigo Snake Preserve in Georgia. The parcel abuts another 14,000 acres of conserved land. Ultimately, Kaplan's goal is to acquire an additional 30,000 acres, including summer habitat for the Indigos.

For the wildcats, Kaplan's conservation work has focused on the 8 largest (of the 37) species. He bought 165,000 acres of ranchland in Brazil's Pantanal country, and is donating 25,000 acres of critical jaguar habitat along the riverfront to Panthera. Kaplan travels there at least once a year to show off the property to potential donors. He's even collared a few of the jaguars himself. "He's not a dilettante," says Hunter of Kaplan's demeanor in the field. "He genuinely sucks oxygen from these trips."

Panthera's work stretches from leopards in southern Africa to cougars in Wyoming. The next frontier: tigers that inhabit the rugged tidal mangroves of Bengal's Sundarbans. Rabinowitz recently returned from shooting an upcoming IMAX movie, Tiger, Tiger , filmed in Bengal by George Butler of Pumping Iron fame. The film was funded in part by Julian Robertson, who, of course, called his hedge fund Tiger Management.

Kaplan suddenly glances at his watch. He's late for a bankers' lunch, but he pays no mind. Talking about conservation is much more important, he says. His focus now is on reeling in donors and forming new alliances with universities and other institutions. He wants to make both of his charities sustainable beyond his own largesse. "I want to take it from being our project to one belonging to the wider world," he says.

I'm an associate editor on the Money team at Forbes based in Fairfield County, Connecticut, leading Forbes' retirement coverage. I manage contributors who cover retirement and wealth management. Since I joined Forbes in 1997, my favorite stories have been on how people fuel ...